


you know I've been to sea before

by irnan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And goddamn it, the worst thing about the entire miserable business was that <i>it was Pepper's own idea</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you know I've been to sea before

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics quoted are from Starsailor, Athlete, The Magic Numbers and Patrick Wolf - yes, OK, I gave Pepper my own taste in sad indy music. It's totally not cheating!

The thing was, Pepper Potts had put up with a lot from Tony Stark. Like, a hell of a lot. She’d put up with his irresponsible fits and his inventing fits and his girlfriends, for a given value of the word girlfriend, and his annual inability to get through the anniversary of his parents’ deaths without getting blackout drunk and speaking of which his borderline alcoholism and his father-figure trying to kill her and his company and his _job_ , which she was now doing personally thank fuck for small mercies, _and_ the fact that even now she and Tony were an item Rhodey still used their goddamn bathroom whenever he stayed over because he and Tony lived on top of each other for years at MIT and can hold an intelligible (to them) conversation _while both of them are brushing their teeth_.

But it was _this_ that took the biscuit: the Black Widow standing in Pepper’s kitchen in track pants, hunting through the cupboards for coffee mugs.

"So I hear you've been having _fun_ ," said Pepper sweetly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Natasha jumped. A little. Then she met Pepper’s smile with one of her own. "It's been hilarious. Loki could give Mr. Stark a run for his money."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Are we going to be catty to each other every time I come by?"

Pepper wanted to bristle, but she had a feeling that would just amuse the other woman. "Not at all. I'm just generally caught a little wrong-footed when I find unanticipated people in my kitchen at half-seven in the morning."

Natasha paused. "I'll... call ahead next time?"

She looked so genuinely hesitant that Pepper gave up in spite of herself. She sighed and flung herself onto a bar stool at the counter; anyone who expected her to leave this Tower today had a hell of another think coming to them.

Besides, Tony’s face at the hospital yesterday: Tony’s triumph, his self-satisfaction at a job well done.

His furiously downplayed concern for these people.

"Mugs are in there,” she said, pointing.

Natasha smiled.

*********

_“Look, we’ve gotta go over there and sort this out,” says Pepper. “I’m not seeing how we can do it from New York. And frankly, Tony, it’ll look good, you know, us going home, showing we haven’t forgotten our people in California.”_

_Tony opens his mouth to answer, but whatever he says it drowned out by a storm of yelling from the couch – Clint’s just lost at Mario Kart to Thor again, and Jane is vehemently denying giving him extra lessons, and Steve and Natasha are arguing about Kindles._

_Steve’s against, Tasha’s for. It’s an ongoing thing. Ordinarily Tony would be up there and taking Nat’s side, but it’s barely ten in the morning and work is piling up already and it’s goddamn May and fucking freezing in New York, how, how is this his life. How has he been reduced to even asking that question?  
_

_“Pepper, my love, I’ve waited half my life to hear you say that to me,” he says when the noise dies down._

_“While we’re out there, we’ll take a vacation,” says Pepper, looking as hunted as he feels._

*********

The first time Pepper decided she'd made a dreadful mistake and it would all fall apart and Tony would be miserable and bitter and angry and do a heel face turn right back to pre-Afghanistan Merchant of Death-attitudes was the time Tony was up to his elbows in retro-engineered alien fighting caterpillars and yelling at Fury about government confiscations over the heads of all the other Avengers while Fury yelled right back and put very visible effort into not reaching for his gun and Steve got between them and said, "Director Fury, please - _shut up_ , Howard -" and Tony fell silent. He'd gone so white his skin looked waxy, unhealthy, corpse-like.

(Or that might have been the purple glowy stuff off the space caterpillar. Whatever.)

Steve had gone white too. They stared at each other as the whole room shivered with tension; Pepper felt sick to her stomach. The one thing - the one thing Tony had never been able to stomach - and how much worse now, after Obie, after every reassurance about Howard that Tony had ever heard had been proved false -

And then Nick Fury said, "Gentlemen, I'm glad that's settled," and Tony and Steve turned, near-simultaneous and perfectly realigned, to start the argument again: still on the same side.

*********

_It is ten thirty in the morning, and theoretically Tony Stark should be having the time of his life. He’s in Malibu. The weather is gorgeous. The house is beautifully silent and perfectly still, clean and clear so that his thoughts have space to echo and spread out._

_He hasn’t tripped over a thing in three days. His dressing gown hasn’t caught on anything or trailed in anything; he’s barefoot and it’s safe to be so. No one’s wandered in to steal his coffee or his sandwiches or raid the drawers for clean cutlery. The TV’s not on. There’s no yelling, either in his immediate vicinity or the distance. He hasn’t been undeservedly snarked at in three days either. Outside his windows the Malibu ocean beckons, the perfect endless view of the sea that Maria Stark craved all her life, that her husband designed this house around so she could see it and be reminded of the Mediterranean coastline she loved._

_It says a lot about Howard that he designed this house to make his wife happy but never actually built it. Like a lot of other stuff, he left that to his kid._

_Tony wanders the blank rooms, soaking up the peace of them, the way the sun gleams on the walls, how the ripples of light reflecting off the pool dance across the ceiling of the living room. Circles the piano, plays three desultory notes, comes back into the living room, paces back and forth across Pepper’s line of view three times before he flings himself down beside her._

_She’s watching David Bowie videos on youtube._

_“I hate Bowie,” he says._

_“No you don’t,” says Pepper._

_“Whatever.” Tony crosses his legs and bounces his bare foot, irritably. He feels… itchy, twitchy, nervous. This is boredom, he dimly realises. He’s spent his whole life dodging this damn awful feeling, and now look at him, stitched up in it as neatly as he never thought he’d be._

_It’s uncool. He built this house so the smooth lines and the blank walls and the big empty curve of the rooms would bring him some peace, which is very and explicitly distinct from boredom, and it pisses him off that his house – his house! – has somehow decided, fifteen years after its completion, fifteen glorious years during which it brought him all the peace he needed, when he needed it, and was open for shenanigans when he didn’t, to forget how that distinction works._

_Pepper puts the laptop down and leans back so she’s pressing her shoulder against his. They look at each other, so close their foreheads are almost touching._

_“Well?” she says challengingly._

_“Screw you, I’m not saying it first,” says Tony._

_“Hmmmm,” says Pepper, dropping her eyes to his mouth and back up, crossing her legs in that way that makes her thighs rub slowly together, stupidly sexy even when she’s not in a skirt. “Why don’t you do that?”_

_“I thought you’d never ask,” says Tony, pouncing._

*********

Tony had told her how Bruce had described himself as being exposed - being a nerve, always raw, always twitching: without a suit of armour. Pepper thought Dr. Banner had fundamentally misunderstood the nature of armour.

"Why, I didn't know you had any," he said, teasingly, the third or fourth evening after he moved in. It was nearly half past eleven and he was still on his first glass of red, which both Pepper and Tony had left far behind them a long time ago.

"Of course I do," said Pepper, amused. "What the hell do you think a business suit _is_ , especially for a woman?"

Bruce's mouth did this really cute thing where it fell open and he moved his jaw a bit before he managed an answer, and considering the fact that he'd drunk, as mentioned, a hell of a lot less than Pepper and Tony had this evening said answer was frankly pathetic.

"Huh."

"Huh," Pepper repeated, mocking. "Huh. Nice. Eloquent. It's exactly the kind of statement the world expects of one of the smartest men -"

"It's the kind of statement the world expects of the Hulk," said Bruce, suddenly baited. Tony was sprawled in his chair with an arm cocked over the back, glass dangling from his fingertips; he was smiling a bit, watching them the way he watched undecided investors and doubtful board members and dithering contractual partners: patient and sly, doling out just enough rope for them to hang themselves, and Tony will have their signatures right here on the dotted line please and thank you and here's the celebratory champagne while they're still choking.

You wanted to know how Tony Stark and Pepper Potts have kept a Fortune 500 company together after the shutdown of its main earning division, the complete restructuring and rearrangement of the entire company, the total renewal of their every business strategy and budget, the complete overhaul of their internal orientation and three years’ worth of walking the finest of fine lines between "no more weapons" and "breaching dozens of long-running immensely lucrative contracts with the entire armed forces of the United States of America" after the death of the man who was _known_ to have run the company for twenty years while Tony partied himself into an early grave and Pepper had his latest floozy's underwear dry-cleaned?

Well, put it like this. The fact that neither Tony nor Pepper ever genuinely imagined a future in which they would need to take a word of what Obadiah Stane had taught them over the years to heart does not mean that the man was not a damn good teacher.

"Your trouble, Dr. Banner," says Pepper, gesturing with the wine glass, "is your fundamental misconception of the meaning of control."

Bruce burst out laughing. "Oh, oh, now I'm fascinated," he said gleefully. "Pepper, I thought we at this table were united in our contempt for English majors, I thought that was a thing we had in common that none of us could stand the kind of humanities student who -"

"We _cannot_ ," said Pepper, talking over him the exact same way she always did with Tony and Rhodey (because it was impossible to get a word in edgewise if she didn't). "We cannot stand English majors, we will always have our hatred for English majors, Bruce, I will never abandon you to that, but the truth is - don't pull your face, listen to me - the truth is that you've been focussing on _stamping out_ when you should have been trying to _channel_."

Bruce, bless his lonely traumatised too-smart-for-his-own-good guilt complex ridden heart, looked surprised, and then amused, and then, ruefully, accepting. Pepper felt triumphant. Tony stayed silent, but that smile he was wearing, awkwardly, unpractised, at the corners of his mouth was telling her everything she needed to know about the future he was imagining now.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," he said to Bruce, who laughed.

"Well, you've made your point. Although, Jesus, is there _anything_ you're afraid of? Anything at all?"

"I'm deathly allergic to strawberries," Tony said, utterly straight-faced.

Pepper laughed and laughed. Bruce grinned too. "Not true?"

"Pepper's allergic," Tony explained. "I forgot that once. Only once!"

"Once would've been enough," said Pepper, wiping her eyes. "Oh! Oh my God. Bruce, I'll tell you a secret. Bunnies freak Tony out."

Bruce put his glass down, folded his arms on the table top and hid his face in them while he laughed, red-faced and helpless.

"Dying freaks me out," said Tony bluntly. "Not in the general - dying without doing what I need to do - wasting my life, without being given enough time to fix it."

Talk about a downer. Pepper looked at him; Bruce raised his head off his arms again.

"What's not wasting it?" he asked curiously.

Tony paused. "I don't know," he admitted. "Doing good, I guess, saving people, clean energy, world peace." He smiled sharply. "Disposing of nuclear weaponry."

"You are a weapon," said Bruce. "I mean, it always comes back to that, doesn't it? We are what we fight. That's what Natasha meant when she said SHIELD was monitoring us."

"The difference is that nobody's selling me to terrorists and murderers."

"I wouldn't put it past Fury to sell us all into alien slavery in return for a spaceship," said Bruce, grinning again.

"Calvin and Hobbes," said Pepper.

"Well, if there's one thing Cap and I agree on, it's that we don't trust Fury," said Tony.

"Drink to that," Pepper said solemnly.

They did.

*********

_Later on, sprawled spent and happy by the poolside – five more minutes before Pepper gets a sunburn; Tony’s going to carry her inside with her legs around his hips and her gorgeous breasts in his face – he says it: “I miss our kids.”_

_Pepper pulls a face. “I do too,” she admits._

*********

“I live in a superhero frat house,” said Pepper when she got home from DC and found the Tower littered with training robots that beeped at her like adorable little mouse droids and a laser tag gun hanging off the back of the chair Tony used at the dining room table.

“Ah, but there aren’t any beer bongs!” said Tony, plainly under the delusion that this was an encouraging thing to say.

Pepper ought to have been more pissed about this than she was.

*********

_They’re not sad enough to call every, like, five minutes or whatever. Just, you know, they check in, that’s all, they make sure that – the world isn’t ending, and the Tower’s still standing, and nobody’s died, and Fury hasn’t shot anyone on the UN Security Council, or similar emergencies._

_“Darlings,” Peggy drawls. “Trust me. Everyone is fine, and everyone will carry on being fine, and you two should just get on and do whatever it is you need to do in Malibu while we’re – we’re entertaining ourselves.”_

_In the background a man’s voice, low and warm; then someone laughs. It’s not a laugh Tony’s ever heard before, but he has a notion it’s Natasha’s._

_“Take an extra week,” says Peggy. “Have a proper holiday.”_

_Tony sighs. “OK, OK. Jarvis has all the phone numbers, you know, for the contractors and the decorators and Nancy will do any catering you want and please don’t break the TV or go into my workshop –“_

_“Tony, you gave the whole house this speech when you left,” says Peggy, sounding more amused than ever. “I am about to hang up on you, I swear.”_

_“If there’s any hanky-panky going on in the background of this call I’d appreciate it if you did that sooner rather than later,” says Tony._

_Peggy hangs up._

*********

And then there’s the time Tony used a repulsor gauntlet he’d been tinkering with to blast a stray supervillain into the wall of the Tower’s main floor, except that the repulsor having been tinkered with it actually blasted the guy _through_ the wall and out the other side and probably left him landing somewhere near the New Jersey turnpike.

So yeah.

“Actually it’s a really nice view,” said Pepper as the biting New York February wind takes this new opportunity to whistle through the rubble and start dragging at her hair and what’s left of her dress, because if she didn’t she’d scream.

“Right?” said Tony, looking thoughtful. “We should totally put a window in.”

*********

_“I think it’s cute,” says Pepper. They’re having breakfast and gossiping about Captain America’s love life, which makes Tony feel like he’s sixteen again, but whatever. It’s a lovely morning again, because it’s always a lovely morning in Malibu. Pepper’s wearing her bikini under one of his shirts. Tony’s in swim trunks himself. Both of them are damp and flushed with the exercise, demolishing a variety of cereals._

_“I think it’s crazy,” says Tony._

_“The idea that you might not believe in polyamory would amuse a very great number of people,” says Pepper, smiling. She’s got that fond, soft look, and her freckles have multiplied. She’s almost tanned, in fact. Her hair goes redder in the sun, richer; Tony’s missed that in New York._

_(The house feels like peace again.)_

_“It’s not about believing,” says Tony. “I mean, believing like judging. Whatever, have you ever known me to care? You know I don’t care. It’s about making contingency plans for when –“_

_He stops. The house chooses this moment to close in on him again._

_“I know,” says Pepper. “I know what you mean.” Then she says, “I’ve never given up my apartment, you know. Here. In town.”_

_Tony catches her glance. “I didn’t know that. I, uh. I keep discarding mine. They’re never feasible. I know what I’d like ‘em to be but, like, I have responsibilities now.”_

_He assumes a martyred look._

_“You won’t need ‘em anyway,” says Pepper calmly._

_“Then give up that apartment.”_

_“Not a chance,” she says cheerfully. “That apartment is my favourite place I’ve ever lived.”_

_Of course after that they have to spend a few days there. It’s dusty at first, smells unlived-in, strangely achy, but Pepper only really took her clothes and some personal stuff out of it; everything else is still here, covered in dust-sheets, waiting for them. Tony takes the bedsheets out of storage, washes them, puts them back on the bed, while Pepper opens all the windows and reconnects – well, everything. After that they sprawl on the bed and make out like teenagers, laughing, tangled easily up in each other._

_Rhodey’s in town for a change. He comes by for dinner, and spends most of it watching them manoeuvre around each other, smiling. It’s been a tough week, he says with a shrug, drinking steadily all evening, like it’s a relief to be home, where he gets to do whatever he wants. Tony’s seen him like this before; it’s that comfortable kind of drunk where you end up sliding easily into sleep, safe and warm._

_The first thing Rhodey did was check that Tony had brought the suit._

_“I take it back about the seals,” Rhodey says. “You’re hotter than seals.” He shakes his head. “I go away, every time I come back I think normal is Tony being Tony, and Pepper being Pepper, and never the twain shall meet. And look at you. It’s disgusting.”_

_Pepper and Tony look at each other across the table._

_“Tell me more,” says Pepper, propping her chin in her hand and hiding a smile._

_“You fit,” says Rhodey, pointing at her with his wine glass. “I’m happy for you, Pepper.”_

_Tony folds his arms on the table top and hides his face in them so he won’t laugh in Rhodey’s. It’s not that he’s wrong; Tony will throw himself off a cliff without the Iron Man suit if Rhodey’s ever wrong. It’s that he looks so adorably like a little kid while he’s saying it._

_They put him to bed on the couch and retire to their own room, where they do indeed fit into and against and around each other perfectly, and Tony falls asleep with Pepper’s hand lying across the arc reactor like she’s holding his heart inside his chest._

*********

When that alien tentacle plant are Pepper's blue ballgown - yes, _that_ blue ballgown - and decimated her shoe closet and in fact came very near to strangling her before a well-aimed repulsor blast (lo, a theme appears!) made it shrivel up and die messily all over her bedroom, she came very near to having hysterics for the first time in twenty years.

Tony - in a burst of uncharacteristic and frankly unnerving practicality and efficiency – booked them a suite at the Plaza and didn’t say a word when she yelled at him for half an hour straight, even though it had been Bruce and not him who'd brought the thing into the Tower in the first place.

*********

_Next morning, Rhodey groans a lot. Tony whips up his patented hangover cure and does a double-take half-way through when he realises he’s been unconsciously making enough for him, Rhodey, Clint, Darcy and at least one other person – Jane, or sometimes Betty or Peggy. None of the others ever really get hangovers._

_In Bruce’s case at least it’s because he doesn’t drink more than a couple glasses a night. Everyone else is just immune._

_“Yuck,” Tony says out loud._

_“I’ve been telling you since MIT that that stuff tastes disgusting,” says Rhodey._

*********

In something of a contrast, the near-sentient electrical appliances didn’t faze Pepper at all. Perhaps this was because she felt undeservedly sympathetic towards the widescreen TV that fell off the wall in an abortive attempt to crush Nick Fury as he passed it.

*********

_“We should totally hook Clint up with someone,” says Pepper once, looking up from her book as if struck with sudden genius inspiration._

_Tony shudders. “I’d rather hunt raptors,” he says._

*********

Within ten months of her Tower being turned into a superhero frathouse the extra food for her and Tony's personal kitchen was a standing order.

"But, Miss Potts," said Elizabeth despairingly. "How do you expect me to cook a thing if I have you, Mr Stark, Dr Banner, James Bond, River Tam, a Norse God and Captain America in my kitchen all day, every day?"

"Elizabeth," said Pepper. "I am so sorry. But I can't - they're - they're puppies, OK? You can't just tell them no, keep out, they look at you all disappointedly and slink away with their tails between their legs like you've hit them with a slipper."

Elizabeth planted her hands on her hips, unimpressed. "Pepper," she said, using her employer's first name for the first time in ten years, "you're paying me to do nothing, sweetie."

Pepper sighed. "Well," she said. "If you're enjoying it, I can afford it."

Elizabeth hmms. "Part time," she said. "Fifty percent. And I'll work for Nancy the other fifty, she's been trying to poach me for years."

Nancy Jackson's firm has done Tony's party catering for longer than Pepper has known him; he'd given her her start-up investment when she was still an employee of SI herself.

Pepper sighed again. "Done," she said to Elizabeth, holding out a hand to shake.

*********

_They curl up in Pepper’s armchair in their pyjamas one rainy morning and listen to her music. A lot of it is Tony’s kind of cock rock, but she has stuff that was popular in the Eighties when they were kids that he never got into, and a lot of later slow smooth alternative stuff, mostly British bands._

_…wipe the make-up from your face_  
 _tie your hair and gently fall from grace_  
 _until I come again_  
 _take the disaffected life_  
 _men who ran the company ran your life_  
 _you could have been his wife…_

_Tony comments on every song extensively, gesticulating and making her laugh; she’s tucked into the curve of his body, her head on his shoulder, knees drawn up. Her forehead brushes at his jaw when she leans in and her weight on his lap is delicious._

_…running down corridors through_  
 _automatic doors_  
 _got to get to you_  
 _got to see this through…_

_“Seriously though,” he says. “What’s with all the sad British indy stuff?”_

_“I like sad indy stuff,” says Pepper. “I know you’re not convinced that’s possible for a girl who also knows all the words to every Aerosmith song ever written, but tough.”_

_“All the Nick Drake in the world is yours, isn’t it?”_

_“Time has told me you’re a rare rare find,” she sings into his collarbone, laughing. “Here. This is a favourite.”_

_…and it's alright, I never thought I'd fall in love again_  
 _it's alright, I look to you as my only friend_  
 _it's alright, I never thought that I could feel this somethin' risin', risin' in my veins_  
 _looks like it's happened again…_

_Tony holds her closer, convulsively; hides his face in her hair._

_...you wanna tell me that you're better off by yourself...I wanna tell you that I’ll never love anyone else…this is not what I’m like, this is not what I do…_

_“Like?” she whispers over the song’s slow winding down, clutching just as tightly as he is._

_“No,” he says. “Jesus. It’s got no rhythm.”_

_She puts Pink Moon on next just to yank his chain. And then, when that gentle rumble has also slid away, something with a beat and a jazzy tune, sharply joyous: …help me see how darling you’ve left your mark…_

_And then, inevitably, Joni: they listen to Blue as the rain clears up outside, pressed close, silent._

*********

Looking back on it, Pepper should have put her foot down the day that Clint took a wrong turn in the air vents and dropped through her and Tony's bedroom ceiling while they were -

She'd been too busy being grateful that what Tony had been doing at the time had not necessitated her actually taking her dress off to realise that the incident was an omen and not an aberration.

*********

_Back at the mansion again they’ve got half a week’s worth of emails to get through; they go to work for a couple days again, clean up R &D, meet with a few board members, schmooze with some investors, go to a charity ball where Pepper bets Tony fifty bucks he wouldn’t actually sing onstage, so of course he gets right up there and croons Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts at her while the rest of the hall goggles and then bursts into thunderous applause, because hello, Miss Potts, apparently you didn’t know this, but Tony Stark can sing._

_She films the whole thing and puts it on youtube, which Tony thinks is unfair; he’s been waiting for the right moment to ambush Clint and Natasha with his awesome singing voice._

_It’s not his fault it hasn’t come up in nearly three years, OK?_

*********

And goddamn it, the worst thing about the entire miserable business is that _it was her idea_.

*********

_They do, in fact, take an extra week off. They don’t do much with it, except each other. Sprawl in bed together with yet more music, swim, eat, smile. Read. Once or twice Tony works – well, swaps emails with Bruce – but not very much._

_He’s startled to see how different Pepper looks at the end of the week, how relaxed, how open. He’s just as startled to realise he looks the same._

_“Jarvis, take a note,” he says into the mirror, thoughtfully. “Let’s do this every year.”_

_“Noted, Sir,” says Jarvis. “I shall update your calendar and Miss Potts’ accordingly.”_

*********

Pepper had dealt with Maria Hill before, at a distance, as it were: mostly in conjunction with Phil, or as his replacement while he was on another mission. What with one thing and another - hospitals, Phil dead, Tony yelling at the doctors, Fury yelling at the Avengers for stopping for takeout, an alien invasion that had left New York in ruins, that sort of thing - it wasn't, perhaps, very surprising that Maria told Pepper the truth about how Fury had used Phil's death within a few hours of Pepper bullying her way into the military hospital.

Fury had glared when he saw the look on her face.

"It was his idea," he’d said.

"That's an excuse, not a reason," Pepper had told him.

He’d shrugged. "You know what my reasons are, Miss Potts."

Pepper had smiled thinly, thinking back to Tony in a sling, sitting on the floor of a hangar in front of the collected press representatives of several continents and gesturing with a cheeseburger. "I know it's been a while since I believed there was such a thing as _the greater good_ , Director."

It had come out sounding like a bit of a threat, which was the way she’d wanted it.

*********

_When they get back home they find the others bought them a karaoke machine._

_“We already have like six dozen of those,” says Pepper._

_“Yeah, but not from us,” says Bruce._

_“Have a good holiday?” says Steve to Tony._

_“Yeah,” says Tony. “You know. It was… relaxing.” He drops his jacket over a chair and aims for the bar, meandering and easy, and promptly trips over a dissembled training robot decorated with a suction-cup-tipped arrow. Bucky laughs at him for a good five minutes straight. Tony doesn’t even mind._

_Much._

*********

Rhodey hit the Tower three weeks after Steve showed up, shedding armour faster than Tony's strip-walk could keep up with. Pepper was fond of the strip-walk, and she sort of resented the mishandling of it. Furthermore, that armour had dents in she could see from the sofa.

"You _maniac_ ," Rhodey bellowed, charging into the kitchen; how he managed to avoid knocking anyone over was beyond Pepper's ken. She wasn't sure he even saw there were other people in the room. "You moron, you fucking reckless idiot."

Having disappeared under a pile of Air Force colonel in modified neoprene, Tony's voice was muffled. "We've had this conversation," Pepper made out. "Over the phone. Six times."

"Right," said Rhodey. "And every time I picture you in a hospital bed hooked up to shit and _riddled with palladium radiating shrapnel_."

"That's not how palladium works," said Tony. They'd drawn apart and were facing each other - Rhodey had his arms crossed over his chest, Tony was leaning back against the counter once more.

"Amazingly, I am aware of that," said Rhodey. "I too went to MIT - d'you remember that, I'm never sure how much of your teenage years you genuinely remember and how much you say you remember because you've heard me talk about them so much."

" _Complain_ about them," said Tony.

"Don't start splitting hairs with me, asshole." Rhodey surveyed him with a jaundiced eye.

Tony grinned. "You can say it, sweetheart," he said. "Go on. I look good."

"You look like you always look," said Pepper, by way of reminding everyone that there were other people in the room as well. The Avengers were developing a sensible strategy of _settle in and watch_ whenever a new episode of The Tony Show started up, but right at the moment, the only one of them who didn't look sharply curious was Natasha. "You look hungover."

"I resent that," Tony said cheerfully as Rhodey turned to hug Pepper in turn. Then there was a brief silence as he looked at everyone else, and they looked back.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, US Air Force," Tony said, sweeping an arm in an introductory gesture. "Rhodey, the Avengers. They followed me home the other week and I figured I'd keep 'em - look pretty on my mantelpiece."

Rhodey sighed. "When you get anything as normal as a mantelpiece, let me know," he said. "Uh, don't I know..." This to Natasha, who smiled. Faintly.

"I'm a Russian spy."

Rhodey grinned. "Moscow '97 was entirely his fault."

"Untrue," Tony said promptly. "You started it."

"For once?" Clint suggested.

"The way I heard it it was a joint effort," said Pepper.

Rhodey turned to Tony with a look on his face that Pepper's words alone did not warrant. "You told her about Moscow '97."

"I already knew," said Pepper.

"I'm not allowed secrets, I'll get fired," said Tony.

"Sorry, did this just turn into another conversation about your sex life?" said Bruce. "Because if so -"

"- I'm outta here," Clint finished.

"We're _all_ outta here," Natasha said.

"I must concur," said Thor. "Your exploits rival the Warriors Three - put together."

"I wish you _were_ ," said Tony.

"You invited us," said Steve. "Not to rub it in or anything."

"I was probably drunk," said Tony.

"Oh my God, you're Captain America," said Rhodey.

"Who, me?" said Tony. "Iron Man, Rhodey, get your superheroes straight."

"Please," said Steve. "Steve. Just Steve."

"Dad works too," said Clint.

"Tony's Team Mom," Bruce agreed.

"It's the stress-baking, I get that," said Rhodey.

Everyone stared.

"Tony stress-baking," said Clint, and started to laugh.

"What for?" asked Thor. "The Lady Elizabeth is a skilled cook."

"I do not stress-bake," said Tony. "I stress-blow-shit-up."

"That does sound more like you," said Steve. "Colonel, can I offer you something? Coffee? Toast? No one else around here has any manners, but I figure you knew that already." He glared at Tony.

"Uh, Jim," said Rhodey. "Normally. I mean, to just about anyone who's not Tony."

"He's my best friend, he can do what he wants in this place," said Tony, glaring back at Steve. They were having one of those moments where no one but themselves could quite tell if they meant the fight or not. Pepper thought not. It was usually not, but Steve still got annoyed in ways she had long forgotten how to be when Tony was rude, or inconsiderate, or cracked jokes at inappropriate moments. Steve didn’t like watching Tony’s unstoppable force railroad people, and being something of an immovable object himself, that made their friendship an eternally entertaining, many-splendored thing.

"I love you too," said Rhodey, side-eyeing him. "By the way, fix my suit?"

Tony's attention broke and realigned itself. (Rhodey, being Rhodey, had known it would. Pepper could practically _see_ the Avengers learning from the Rhodes Method of Dealing With Tony Stark. It didn't always work, any more than Pepper's did, but it was worth a try.) "FIX YOUR SUIT!" he bellowed. "FIX YOUR SUIT MY PERFECT ASS, first you steal it now you wreck it, what the fuck have you done, JARVIS! Rhodey, put the toast down, there are more important things than breakfast, fix your fucking suit, my God."

The best part of Tony getting distracted by stuff was the way he'd remember to do an about-face half way through and come back to kiss Pepper before he disappeared.

"Seals," said Rhodey, disgusted.

"Jealous," said Pepper.

"Of him?"

"Of me," she said, and flicked her fingers at him in dismissal. "Most people are."

Rhodey laughed – but didn’t actually deny it.

The Avengers took note of that as well.

 


End file.
